A Tea-party in the Summer-House. "Dovey appeared with a large saucer of peaches and cream."A Tea-party in the Summer-House. "Dovey appeared with a large saucer of peaches and cream."
Malviny, her mulatto maid, ran to her with a bottle of hartshorn, and Cousin 'Ratio kneltupon the floor by her and put his arm about her, and fanned her with a turkey-tail fan, and another colored woman rushed off to the kitchen, and was back in a jiffy with a bunch of feathers all on fire, and making a dreadful smell, and stuck them under her mistress's nose. I backed to the door with a wild notion of getting out of the way, and running back home, yet could not tear myself away from the unusual scene.
As soon as Cousin Nancy could speak, she laughed at sight of my face,—the tears still dripping all the way to her chin,—and held out her arms:—
"Poor little lammie! did I frighten the life out of her? You mustn't mind my nervous turns, dear. They don't mean anything."
"I was afraid I had said something I oughtn't to," I faltered, on the verge of tears. "I'm sorry if I did!"
Whereupon I was drawn close to her, and kissed three times to assure me that I wasthe "best little girl in the world, and that she wouldn't give way again."
"But, you see, I had got so nervous because you were gone so long, and you drove that skittish colt, and I was sure something had happened," she explained to her husband, who still stood by her, stroking the back of her hand, in awkward fondness. He stooped to lay his bearded face against hers.
"That's like you! Always thinking of other people, and never of yourself!" he said admiringly.
She thought a great deal of me for the rest of my visit, ordering Malviny to cut out and make a doll's pelisse for me of a lovely piece of red silk, saying that she would have done it herself if sewing did not make her so nervous.
"I haven't darned a sock or hemmed a pocket-handkerchief for Cap'n Gates in ten years. If he were not the best man on earth, he would have sent me packing long ago."
She despatched another servant to thegarret for some toys her sister's children had left with her last year, and gave me permission to pull all the flowers I wanted in the garden. I carried three maimed dolls, a headless horse, a three-legged cat, and a Britannia tea-set to a summer-house at the end of a long walk, and made believe that I was Titania, the Queen of the Fairies, of whom I had read in a tattered copy of Shakespeare I found in a lumber closet. By and by, Malviny brought out to me a pretty china plate with four sugar cakes, shaped like ivy leaves, and a glass of very sweet lemonade. Awhile later, Dovey, a half-grown girl, appeared with a large saucer of peaches and cream, plentifully sugared.
"Mistis says you must eat 'em all, for she knows you mus' be mighty thirsty, and peaches is coolin' for little ladies whar's been sick."
There were still some cake crumbs and a spoonful of peaches left when I saw Cousin Nancy herself come sailing down the walk.
Myfar-away cousin could never have been pretty except to a fond husband's eyes. I should have liked to think her tolerably good-looking now, since he loved her so dearly and praised her so enthusiastically, and she was so much more than good to me. I could not help using and believing the eyes that showed me a tall, lean woman whose skin, once fair, was now nearly as yellow as the freckles spattered all over her forehead, nose, cheeks, and chin. Nose and chin were long, her cheek-bones were high, her eyes were pale, the lashes so light and thin as to be scarcely visible at all,and her scanty flaxen hair was dragged tightly away from a high bony forehead. Her gown to-day was white cambric, as clean, as glossy, and as opaque as cream-laid letter-paper. Her head was bare, and she carried over it a green parasol which made her complexion livid. Her voice was soft and sweet, and her manners were liked by everybody. I was glad to think of these things, and to feel the charm of tone and manner, as she asked if I "would not like to pay a visit to the peaches and watermelons."
I should have preferred to stay where I was, having got very well acquainted with my attendant fairies, and eaten enough sweets to take the edge from my appetite, even for ripe, fresh fruit. Still, I got up with a tolerable show of cordiality, comprehending that she meant to please me, took the hand she offered, and was soon out of the cool shade in the open field separating garden from orchard. Captain Gates was really as proud of his reputation as the most successful fruit-grower inthe county as his wife was, although he affected to ridicule her weakness in the same direction. There were two acres of peach trees, most of them laden with fruit. When pressed to "eat all I could swallow," I managed to do away with three immense globes of crimson-and-gold, and then gave out, shamefacedly:—
"You see I am so little, and the peaches are so big!" I urged. "I hold just so many and no more."
"Of course, you comical little thing!" interrupted Cousin Nancy, highly amused. "By and by, on our way back from the watermelon patch, maybe there will be more room. I shan't ask you to pick the melons from the vines and eatthemby the dozen. Come along!"
She did not seem to mind the heat that struck upon my face and head like the breath of an oven, as we crossed another open field, to that in which Captain Gates's famous melons lay by the hundred, growing larger and more luscious in the August sunlight that warmed them through and through. Some were darkgreen, some light green, some were streaked and mottled with white-and-green.
"Oh, Cousin Nancy!" I cried, "I did not know there were so many in the world! Whatwillyou do with them all?"
She led the way farther into the network of vines, the rank leaves and starry blossoms bobbing about her feet. The fruit and flowers of Cold Comfort did something toward filling the place left void in her heart by the lack of the children that had never come. She stood still and looked over the wide patch as if she had made every melon there, and meant to have the full credit for her work.
"Do with them, monkey! Why they are as good as a silver mine—the beauties! Every full-grown one stands for a quarter of a dollar. We send six wagon-loads to Richmond every week, and people come for them from every direction—as far as across the river in Goochland; and we give dozens away to our neighbors, and the negroes come at night to steal them—Oh!oh!!OH!!!"
She gathered her skirts tightly and high above her ankles with both hands, letting the green parasol tumble, head foremost, to the ground, and screeched as if she had trod upon a yellow-jacket's nest. She was going to have Nerves again, with no hartshorn, or burnt feathers, or turkey-tail fan, or Cousin 'Ratio near. I started to run to the house for help, but she grabbed my frock frantically.
"If you budge one inch you are a dead child!" she wheezed, her pale eyes bulging from the sockets. "Cap'n Gates and the overseer came out here last night and just sowed all this patch with side-blades!" (Scythe-blades.) "Edges up! Sharp as razors and thick as thieves! Hundreds of them! To keep the negroes from stealing any more of them! I heard Cap'n Gates tell them he was going to do it, and the overseer told them this morning that theyhaddone it. And I haven't an atom of an idea where a solitary one of the murderous things is! We are as good as dead if we try to get out. Wemight tread upon one, at the first step! How could I forget it? Oh, how could I?"
I felt the blood drain away from my face, and I trembled as violently as she. Then a thought came to me, and I got it out between chattering teeth.
"We didn't tread on any of them coming into the patch."
"That was sheer providence, honey. Wemighthave been cut in two before we had gone ten yards."
"But, Cousin Nancy!" catching at her hands as she began to wring them again, and to sob and squeal as she had done in the morning. "Listen! I am sure I could go out by the very same path! Let's try! We can't stay here always."
"Path!There isn't a sign of a path! Look!"
She pointed a bony finger in the direction we had come. The leaves and blossoms disturbed by our feet and skirts were as still as the hundreds and thousands of other leaveson all sides of us. We had not bruised a vine, or left a footprint, that we could see. The sun poured down upon us like fire from heaven; we were in the middle of the patch that seemed, to my horrified eyes, miles and miles in extent, and not another creature was in sight.
"Our only hope is to scream as loud as ever we can," said Cousin Nancy. "Nobody knows where we are; the hands are all in the tobacco, a mile on the other side of the house, and Cap'n Gates and Mr. Owen may be even farther off, for all I know. If we can't make anybody hear us, the Lord have mercy upon our souls! We shall have sunstroke inside of an hour."
I picked up the green parasol, and with clumsy, shaking fingers opened it, and stood on tiptoe to hold it over her head, crying, meantime, as piteously as she, such was the contagion of hysterical terror. Then, with one accord, we lifted up our voices, weak with weeping, in a thin screech. I said "Help!help! help!" she cried, "Murder! murder!" and "Cap'nGa-a-tes!" We made enough noise to startle the dogs in the house-yard and at the stables, and brought from the nearer "quarters" and corn-field a gang of negroes, of all sizes and ages, all running at the top of their speed, and the faster as they descried us. It would have been excruciatingly funny at any other time, and to one that was not an actor in the drama, to observe that not one man, woman, or pickaninny of the excited crowd offered to pass the confines of the melon patch. Each one was mindful of the hundreds of buried side-blades with their edges uppermost, and almost all were bare-footed.
"Run! some of you-all, for Marster an' Mr. Owen!" shrieked Malviny, getting her wits together before the others could rally theirs. The shrill order arose above the chorus of groans and cries and pitying exclamations, and Cousin Nancy, on hearing it, gave one wild cry, and dropped where she stood, a heap of white cambric, head, arms,and green parasol, crushing the vines, and her head just grazing a mammoth melon.
I had never been so frightened in all my life as when I got hold of her head, and tried to lift it. It was as heavy as lead. Too much terrified and too foolish to bethink myself that a cut would bleed, I concluded that she had struck one of the murderous blades, and it had killed her. Her eyes were closed; her jaw had fallen; her cheek lay close against that of the big melon, and the vines met over her nose. It was a ghastly and a grotesque spectacle, and I behaved as any other nine-year-old would—jumped up and down and screamed, beating my palms together, and calling alternately for "Father!" and "Cousin 'Ratio!"
Since that horrible moment I have believed stories read and heard of people being scared to death, or into insanity. In the great, round world, there was nothing present to me but a cruel expanse of green below, a white-hot sky above, and at my feet a dead woman, killedby the razor-like blades thick-set under every leaf, and guarding every melon. Then all this was swept out of sight by a black wave that took me off my feet.
I awoke in the shade of the peach orchard. Mr. Owen, the overseer, had laid me down on the grass, and I heard him say, "She's all right now." I sat up and stared around me. Cousin Nancy, still in a dead faint, was stretched upon the ground a little way off, a fluttering swarm of women about her, with water, brandy, hartshorn, cologne, fans, and burning feathers, and Cousin 'Ratio, kneeling over her, was calling in her ear, the tears running down his bristly cheeks.
"Miss Nancy! honey! sugar-lump! wake up! it's me, dearie! The danger is all over. What adoggonedfool I was to put the side-blades there!"
When she at last revived, she was taken to the house and put to bed. She was not yet able to sit up when my father and mother drove over for me in the cool of the afternoon.
"My tomfoolery came near to being the end of the poor dear," said Cousin 'Ratio, walking with us to the carriage, when we had taken leave of his wife. "I feel mighty bad about it, too, as you may suppose, for it was my fault in not reminding her of those cussed side-blades. Between ourselves, Burwell,"—coming nearer to my father and glancing over his shoulder to be sure none of the servants were within hearing,—"Owen and I put just exactlytwoin the whole patch, and they were near the fence. Miss Nancy never went within a Sabbath day's journey of them. We made a mighty parade of toting twenty of them past the quarters, taking two of the hands along to help. They laid them down by the fence, and we came down after dark and carried all but two off to the old tobacco barn, and hid them there. I wasn't likely to rust my best side-blades by burying them in the dirt. But I'd rather have ruined them all and lost every blessèd melon on the place, than have given Miss Nancy's Nerves such a shock."
Nobodyseemed to know how everybody got into the way of calling her "Old Madam Leigh." It was not a Virginia custom, and there was not another old lady in the neighborhood to whom the title of "Madam" was ever given. After she had lived to be the oldest woman in the county, the "Old" was prefixed, naturally enough.
I got to know her through Cousin Molly Belle.
"I declare, Frank, Molly has never seen Queen Mab and her hummers!" she said at dinner one day. "I'm ashamed of myself fornot having taken her there. It's just the sort of thing she would enjoy."
When Mrs. Frank Morton was ashamed of having done anything, or having left anything undone, the next, and a quick step with her, was to mend the fault without further waste of words. We went over to Old Madam Leigh's that same afternoon,—she, Cousin Frank, and I,—on horseback, "the road to Queen Mab's palace being the vilest in the State," as my hostess averred.
I thought it a delightful road. It left the main highway a mile beyond Cousin Frank's plantation gate, and lost its way in oak and hickory woods, where the trees touched over our heads. I said they were "trying to shake hands with one another."
"They will be hugging one another before we go much farther," said Cousin Frank.
As they did when we began to climb a long hill, washed into crooked gullies by the water that tore down to the creek at the bottom whenever it rained hard. After this was a shortand steeper hill, and then another long one, and we were on the edge of a clearing, very bright and sunny after the green glooms of the forest.
"Does Queen Mab drive this way, often, in her chariot-and-four?" I inquired, as we struck into a gentle gallop along a grassy lane.
"Queen Mab's chariot has not been out of the carriage-house in twenty-five years," answered Cousin Molly Belle. "There is another road from her house to where everyday people live, but it would take us a long way around. Mother can recollect when this was a good road, and much travelled."
"Doesn't she make any visits?"
"Never to human beings."
"Doesn't she go to church?"
"Not that I have ever heard of."
"Cousin Molly Belle!" in an awed tone. "Is she aheathen?"
"She is very old, Namesake. Nearly ninety."
She said it gravely and gently, and CousinFrank repeated a verse of poetry I did not know then:—
"He prayeth best who loveth bestAll things both great and small;For the dear God who loveth us,He made and loveth all."
It was so nice that I turned it over in my mind several times before I asked another question. My mother sometimes called me "an animated interrogation-point."
"Is Old Madam Leigh married?"
"She has been married. She would not be 'Madam' if she had not been. She has been a widow for a long, long time. She had two children—twins—a boy and a girl. They lived to be twenty years old, and then died."
"Not both at the same time, Cousin Molly Belle?" for her tone suggested something very sorrowful.
"Yes, Molly dear. The sister fell into the river and the brother, in swimming out to save her, was seized with the cramp and sank beforehe could reach her. The mother has lived alone ever since, except for her servants. They are very good and faithful. Then, she has her hummers and her pygmies, who are a great deal of company to her."
"Pigs!" in intense disgust. "She can't be a very neat person."
A peal of laughter from my companions broke off the speech.
"You'll change your mind shortly," said Cousin Frank, cantering ahead to open a gate in the rail fence.
We saw the house from the gate,—a wee bit of a gray cottage, one story high, literally covered with honeysuckles of every kind I had ever heard of, and now in fullest bloom. An enormous catalpa tree, also in flower, stood in front of the cottage, shading all but one gable, and that looked as if it were made of glass. Between this gable and the garden were two spreading acacia trees, tufted with the tassel-like blossoms. The deep front porch was curtained with white jessamine, and as we walked up thegravelled path leading to it, Madam Leigh stood in the doorway.
She was a tiny old lady, no taller than I was, and wore a white dress, fine and sheer. Cousin Molly Belle told me afterward that it was India muslin, and that she wore white, winter and summer. The waist of the gown was very short, the skirt was straight, and fell to the in-step of a foot no bigger than a baby's. Her cap was also old-fashioned, made of lace, with a full crimped border under which her hair, silvery-white, was dressed in short, round curls on each side of her forehead. Her skin reminded me of a bit of rice-paper I had picked up from the floor one day. It had dropped out of the back of my father's watch, and Bud had found it and played with it until it was creased and cracked all over like "crazed" china, yet not torn. Old Madam Leigh's face could not be said to be wrinkled, for the lines were shallow. They were as fine as if made with an inkless crow quill, and so close together you would have thought there was not roomfor another. Her eyes were dark and bright She had French blood in her veins, and showed it in her quick glance and lively motions.
She took us directly into "the chamber" on the left side of the hall that cut the house in two. Everything there was white, too,—bed and curtains and chair-covers being of white dimity, trimmed with lace. The walls were almost covered with portraits. Some were very old. Two of the brightest hung opposite the bed where Madam Leigh must see them as soon as she opened her eyes in the morning. One was of a pretty girl in a white frock, low-necked and short-sleeved, with a red rose in the bodice, making the fair skin it rested against all the fairer. Her eyes were dark and sweet; short brown curls, like Madam Leigh's white ones, clustered about her temples. The other picture was that of a handsome boy of twenty, or thereabouts, and strikingly like his sister. A dog, with silky ears, leaned his head against his young master's arm.
I tried hard not to stare at these portraits,—to me the most interesting things in the room,—for I knew they must be the twin-children who had died together, ever and ever so many years ago. The instinct of kindly breeding told me that it would not be polite to remind the mother of her loss by looking inquisitively at them. But I could not help stealing a glance at one and the other when the grown people were intent in talk. Looking led to dreaming, as I was left to myself and the thoughts suggested by the portraits. I arranged it in my mind that brother and sister were very fond of each other; that the sister had fallen into the river where the current was strong, from some such place as Maiden's Adventure, on Mr. Pemberton's plantation, where the water was deep above a roaring fall. I thought how she called to her brother, and how he answered, and I wondered—a chill running down my spine and catching at my heart—who carried the awful news to the mother. How could she bear it? how live inthis lonely place with nobody to keep her from thinking of, and missing, her husband and her children, nobody to care whether she were glad or sorry, sick or well, alive or dead?
I did not know that my mouth was drawn down at the corners, that my eyes were mournful, and my whole aspect that of a sadly bored little girl, who felt herself to be left entirely out of the thoughts of her friends and the hostess—until Madam Leigh's voice made me start, as if I had been asleep.
"I am afraid this little lady finds all this mighty stupid."
I think the old-time practice of calling girl-children "little ladies," kept them in wholesome remembrance of the necessity of behaving as such. At any rate, I was instantly aware that I ought to be sitting up straight upon my cricket, and seeming to be interested in what was going on. Had not my mother reproved me, times without number, for dreaming in company and for absent-minded waysthat made me heedless of others' comfort? "It is selfish and rude not to pay attention to what people are saying when you are with them"—was a nursery rule I ought to have had well by heart.
It was natural, then, that I should turn as red as a cardinal flower, and fidget uneasily, and stutter when I tried to set myself right with my venerable hostess:—
"Oh, no, ma'am. I'm not a bit tired. I'm sorry—if—"
"There's nothing to be sorry for, my dear. If anybody has been rude it is I who ought to have provided some other entertainment for you than sitting still, and trying with all your might to understand big folks' talk."
Her voice was clearer than one would have expected in such an old lady, and she did not mumble as if she were chewing her words, as a great many old people do. She spoke very distinctly, pronouncing every syllable in each word. She told me, when we were better acquainted, that she read aloud for an hourevery day, for fear she might fall into careless ways of speaking, seeing, as she did, so few educated white people, and, sometimes, talking with nobody but her colored servants for a week at a time. She held herself very straight when seated, and in walking, and stepped as lightly as a young person, as she got up and took me by the hand, smiling at me in the friendliest way imaginable, and, saying "I must introduce you to my family," led me across the hall, and opened a door on the other side.
As soon as we were inside of the door, she shut it quickly behind us, and I stood stock-still with amazement at what I saw and heard.
It was a large room, with two windows at the front and two at the back, while the gable we had seen from the lane was almost filled with sashes, as in a greenhouse. Close against these sashes, now so bright with the Southern sun that I was half-blinded for an instant, were rows of shelves, crowded with cut flowers in vases, and growing flowers in pots. Mostof the sashes were open, and the space thus left was screened by twine netting, something like fine fish seines. Old Madam Leigh had netted each of these squares herself, as I learned afterward. The same protected back and front windows. About the open windows, and around the flowers, flew and floated what I thought, at first, were at least one hundred humming-birds. Madam Leigh said there were but twenty-five, all told. The whir of their rapid wings filled the air, the gleam of their brilliant breasts and backs was like living jewels.
"Oh-h-h-h!!" was all I could utter, as I clasped my hands in admiring wonder at the beauty and the strangeness of it all, and a queer lump came into my throat, as if I were frightened or sorry, and I knew I was only delighted past speaking. Madam let me alone for a minute, before she laid her small, wrinkled hands upon my shoulders and turned me about to see something I had not observed in my raptures over the marvellous birds.
Against the wall beyond the door was a long, broad table, or rather counter, and upon it was a village of small houses, rows upon rows of them. Outside of the village and the streets were other and larger houses, in groups of two and three, with dooryards and gardens, and then came half a dozen farm-houses surrounded by fields and gardens. In the village there were stores and a Court House, and a Clerk's Office and a Jail, surrounded by a Public Square, exactly like that at Powhatan Court House, and two taverns with signs hanging outside of them. Trees lined the streets, and vines were running over the houses. Then, there were wells, and wood-piles with men chopping wood at them, and cow-pens with cows and calves, and pig-pens filled with pigs. Men were driving wagons along the roads, and a fine carriage with four horses harnessed to it and a coachman on the box stood before the larger of the two taverns. The footman, hat in hand, was helping two elegantly dressed ladies out of the carriage,and the landlady, with two colored maids behind her, was upon the portico waiting to receive them. Men were digging in the corn and tobacco fields; there were turkeys, chickens, ducks, and geese, and boys riding horses to water and driving the cows home to be milked.
Was ever such another Wonderland revealed to a child who had never been in a toy-shop and never owned a doll that was not home-made?
I screamed and capered with joy, like the crazy thing I was, for a whole minute after my eyes fell upon the mimic settlement. Then I fell to examining the "entertainment" more closely, and discovered that everything, except the mosses that imitated the trees, vines, and other growing things, was made of corn-stalks and corn-husks—"shucks" as Virginians call them. The human creatures and the dumb animals were carved out of the firm, dried pith of the stalks, and afterward painted with water colors. The clothes of men andwomen were made of the soft inner shucks, dried carefully to the pliability of silk. Log and frame houses were built of the canes themselves; the smallest were used whole, the larger were split. Peeping into the open doors and windows I saw that each house was furnished with beds, tables, and chairs, also made of corn-stalks, pith, and shucks.
At the far end of the counter were six bird-cages, constructed of thin strips of corn-canes, each supplied with perches and water vessels.
"Those are my reform prisons," Madam Leigh said to my cousins, who had followed and begged to be let in. "You see,"—to me,—"when one of my hummers becomes cross or quarrelsome, I separate him from the rest and shut him up in one of these cages until he is in a better humor. I am sorry to say that they have pretty peppery tempers, and hardly a day passes in which I do not have to interfere to stop their fighting."
I had no reason to feel myself slighted now. She went all round the room with me, showingher pets and telling me interesting stories of their habits and dispositions. Each had a name, and some answered to their names when she called them. At least, she thought that they did, and I did not doubt it when I saw them swoop down to dip their bills in the flowers she held up, as she called "Sprite" and "Bright," and "Sweet" and "Swift," and the like crisp, short names in a voice that was like the tinkle of a little bell. It was a pretty sight,—the tiny woman, all white from cap to toe, standing in the full tide of sunbeams, bunches of honeysuckle and catalpa flowers, half as big as herself, in her arms, the elf-like face smiling out of them at the eagerness of her feathered darlings, darting and glancing and gleaming and humming about her, as if she had been a larger edition of themselves, and not of a different genus. She made me stand by her while this was going on, saying that the hummers were "too well-bred to be afraid of her friends, and were especially fond of little people."
"The honeysuckles first made me think of collecting them," went on the pleasant tinkle. "When they are in full bloom the frisky little creatures swarm in them all day long. They like white and yellow jessamine, too, and catalpa flowers and lilies and acacia blossoms. Ten years ago I found one of their nests upon a low limb of a tulip-poplar tree. Here it is! It looks like a knob of mossy bark, you see. There were two eggs in it. I cut off the limb carefully, and set it in a pot of water in this room. It was full of blossoms, and the water kept these alive. The window was left open and nobody—not even myself—came in here for a week. As I had hoped, the mother and father bird found the nest, and went on sitting on the eggs as if it had not been moved. One night, after the baby birds were hatched, I went softly to the outside of the window and let down the sash. That was the beginning of my aviary. That's a hard word for you—isn't it, Molly? It means a family of birds, such as I have here."
"I don't believe there is another like it in the world," said Cousin Molly Belle. "I've always declared that you are a fairy, and charm your hummers. I described it and them once to a famous ornithologist. That's a real jaw-breaker, Namesake, and means one who knows everything about all sorts of birds—or thinks he does. I met this or-nith-ol-o-gist in New York last May. He said it was impossible to tame and raise families of wild birds, especially humming-birds. And when I said I had seen it with my own eyes, times without number, he looked polite—and unbelieving."
Madam Leigh was so much amused that the flowers shook in her shrivelled mites of hands.
"Many learnèd strangers have been to see the 'impossibility,'" she said, her voice shaken by laughter.
(Cousin Molly Belle had the knack of saying just the thing that would please everybody, and saying it in the right way and at the right time.)
"Of course I have not raised them all from the eggs," continued Madam. "We catch new birds every year, and some are never quite tame. So your or-nith-ol-o-gist"—pronouncing it in the same comical way that Cousin Molly Belle had done—"was not altogether in the wrong. But they get used to their new life much sooner because there are so many of their own kind about them. When I find that a couple are thinking of going to house-keeping, I root a branch of poplar, or hickory, or maple, in a tub of moist earth, and curtain off a corner where they will not be disturbed in the nesting-time."
"That was the very thing the celebrated or-nith-ol-o-gist said was absolutely impossible," cried Cousin Molly Belle. "Even though I told him that, if he would pay us a visit, I would show him the cosey corner, and the pretty bride and gallant bridegroom building their nest."
"A great many things happen to each of us that others would not believe, no matterhow solemnly we might declare them to be true," said Madam Leigh, very seriously.
I had a notion that she was thinking of other things in her strangely desolated life besides the aviary and the learnèd man who knew all about birds.
"To me, the most singular part of my management of my hummers is that I succeed in making them comfortable and contented in the winter," she said. "For their forefathers and foremothers have been going South at the first sign of frost for six thousand years or so. I have a stove put up in here, covered with wire netting to hinder the little dears from flying against it; then I keep an even temperature and fill the room with flowers. It has, as you see, a southern exposure. I live here with them all day long. When it begins to grow dark, I say, 'Good night' and go across to my chamber. At bedtime I look in to make sure the fire will keep in until morning, and that my darlings are all right. While daylight lasts we are very happy together. I am busy with my pygmies and my flowers. I feed the hummers with sugar-and-water in winter, with a taste of honey on Sundays"—laughing cheerily. "To make them glad that Sunday has come, you know. I've an idea that they need stronger food in cold weather than in summer. It helps tame them to make them eat from the tip of my finger. I take a great deal of pains to keep a succession of plants in flower, for, after all, hive-honey isn't quite as pure and delicate after it has gone through the bee's body as when the hummer sips it fresh from the flower-cup. You must come over next winter, Molly Belle, and bring the little lady to see my nasturtiums, and hyacinths, and morning-glories. Roses and cape-jessamines, and the like are of no use to us. Our flowers must be shaped like wine-glasses, with a drop of honey-dew in the bottom, to please us perfectly. The hummers and I understand that. You wouldn't believe how much company we are for one another, or how much I learn fromthem. Even my silly mannikins give work to my fingers and keep my thoughts steady."
Cousin Molly Belle put her arms around the wee old lady and hugged her hard—the honeysuckles and catalpas falling to the floor.
"All this is the loveliest thing I ever heard!" laughing to keep from crying. "I hope you will live to be a hundred years old, and give the lie to or-nith-ol-o-gists every day you live. And Molly and I will come to see you, often and often, whenever she is at our house. You dear, brave, sensible, lion-hearted,royalQueen Mab!"
She kept her word. It was one of her many ways to do more than she had promised. I never paid a visit to my dearest cousins, the Frank Mortons, without riding, or driving, up through the woods, and across the creek, and up the two long, and the one short, hill, and along the grass-grown lane to the gray cottage that always reminded me of a "hummer's" nest masked with moss. I spent a good deal of that summer with CousinMolly Belle, and one week in the very middle of December.
The weather was very mild for midwinter, and the great south room felt too warm to me. So warm that I began to feel sleepy and a little dizzy, and Madam Leigh noticed the yawn I could not quite swallow.
"Put on your hood and cloak, little lady," she said, "and run into the garden to see if you cannot find some roses for your cousin. Betty tells me there has been so little frost this season that the rose-bushes are still all in leaf."
I scampered off willingly, and did not show myself in the house again until the sun almost touched the tree-tops. I gathered chrysanthemums and nasturtiums and late heartsease, and at least a dozen roses and buds, and, wandering farther and farther down the quiet paths, I saw what I had never noticed before—that there was a small graveyard at the back of the garden, of which it formed a part. An arbor, thickly curtained with a Floridahoneysuckle that kept its leaves all winter, was at one side of the burial-place; a walk, edged with box, stretched from it straight up to the house-yard. Now that the trees were bare, I saw that old Madam Leigh could have a full view, through the windows in the south gable, of the arbor, and the two white headstones before it:—
I sat down in the summer-house and had a long thinking spell, all by myself. Too young to word the emotions that swelled my heart, the thoughts that oppressed my brain, there was, all the while, in heart and head, the recollection of the story she had told of her manner of getting the first pair of humming-birds—and how she had stolen softly aroundto the window after dark, and shut the parents in with their nestlings.
I never saw her again. On Christmas morning the maid, who came as usual to awake and dress her mistress, found that she had died in her sleep.
OUSIN BURWELL CARTER fell in love with our handsome, amiable Boston governess, Miss Davidson, and married her when I was ten years of age. She comforted my mother for her loss by sending for her younger sister, who was even prettier than herself, and had such winsome ways that Mr. John Morton, Cousin Frank's bachelor brother, married her at the end of her first session in our school-room.
My father looked quizzically grave when the two sisters recommended a Miss Bradnor of Springfield, Massachusetts, as a person whowas sure to please our parents and to bring us on finely in our studies.
"Is she pretty and marriageable?" he asked. "My business, nowadays, seems to be providing the eligible bachelors of Powhatan with wives. It is pleasant enough from one standpoint, and that is the young men's. But my children must be educated."
Both young matrons assured him, earnestly, that Miss Bradnor was "a predestined old maid—a man-hater, in fact—and was likely to remain a fixture in our school-room as long as we needed her." When she arrived I was surprised to see a prim, quiet little personage who looked too gentle to hate any one. She fitted easily into her place in our family and soon proved herself the prize we had been promised, being a born instructor, and loving her profession. She awoke my mind as nobody else had done. I fancied that I could feel it stretch, and grow, and get hungry while she taught me. The more it was fed, the hungrier it grew, and the more eagerly it stretcheditself. I studied Comstock'sNatural Philosophywith Miss Bradnor, and Vose'sAstronomy, and Lyell'sElements of Geology, Bancroft'sHistory of the United States, andWatts on the Mind, and began French and Latin. It was such a busy, happy year that I was actually sorry when vacation began.
I was sorrier yet when a letter was received from Miss Bradnor, saying that she "had been betrothed for ten years to an exemplary gentleman who now claimed the fulfilment of her pledge. Before the letter could reach us she would (D. V.) have become Mrs. Calvin Chapin. She hoped the unforeseen reversal of her plans for the ensuing year would not occasion serious inconvenience to her dear and respected friends, Mr. and Mrs. Burwell."
"It takes the prim sort to give us such surprises!" exclaimed my mother.
"It takes all sorts and conditions of women,Ithink!" rejoined my father, dryly. "I foresee that the Richmond plan will have to be carried out, after all. Governesses are kittlecattle, at the best. And we have had three of the very best."
As may be supposed, I was consumed by curiosity to know what "the Richmond plan" could be. The city I had never yet seen had been made tenfold more interesting to me within a year by the removal of the Frank Mortons to that place. Cousin Frank had gone into the Commission business there with an uncle who had no son to succeed him in the firm. But, although I pricked up my ears smartly at my father's unguarded remark, I had to smother my excitement as best I could, and study patience—surely the hardest lesson ever set for the young. When older people were talking with one another, it was esteemed an impertinence in children to interrupt them by questions.
"If it were best for you to understand what we were saying, we would take pains to explain it to you," my mother would say when we broke this one of her rules. And, still oftener, "Little girls should trust their fathersand mothers to tell them at the right time all that they ought to know."
The right time in this instance was one moonlight September night, soon after Mary 'Liza and I had gone to bed. My mother had a habit of coming up to our room, and sitting down by the bed in the dark, or without other light than the moon, to have a little talk with us. "To give us a good appetite for our dreams," she would say in her merry way. We dearly enjoyed these visits, especially on Sunday nights, when we told her what we had been reading and thinking that day, and repeated the hymns we loved best.
This was on Monday night, and she began by telling us that Miss Judy Curran was coming the next day, to make our fall and winter frocks, and that there would be a pretty busy time with us all for the rest of the month, as we were going to school in Richmond, the fifth day of October.
"Your father and I do not believe in boarding-schools," she continued. "We think thatGod gives our children to us to be brought up and educated, as far as possible, by us, their parents, and not to be made over to hirelings at the very time when they are most easily led right or wrong. There are, however, excellent reasons why you should begin now to know more of the world than you can learn in a quiet country neighborhood such as this. We are thankful to be able to give you the advantages of a city school, without depriving you of good home-training. You are to live with your Cousin Molly Belle, and be day-scholars in Mrs. Nunham's seminary."
Even Mary 'Liza gave a little jump under the sheet at the astounding news, while I leaped clean out of bed, and danced around the room in my night-gown, clapping my hands and uttering small shrieks of ecstasy.
"Hurrah! hurrah! goody! goody! mother! it is like a fairy tale!"
I was somewhat abashed, and decidedly ashamed of my transport when the blessèd mother said gently, after a little sigh:—
"Of course I shall miss my daughters sadly, but I hope what we are doing is for their good. If I were less sure of this, I could not part with them."
From the hour in which her first-born baby was laid in her arms, until she closed her eyes in the sleep from which our wild weeping could not awaken her, her ever-present thought was the children's best good. Nothing that could secure that was self-denial on her part.
I have come to Richmond to write this chapter. From my window I look down upon the pavement trodden by my feet twice a day for ten months out of twelve, during four school years. The house in which I sojourn belongs to a younger brother of him who figures in my story as "Bud." It occupies the site of the large, yellow frame building in which Mrs. Nunham taught her "young ladies," more than forty years ago.